What Happened on May 22nd

Robert Metcalfe's Original Ethernet memo

may 22, 1973Xerox Researcher Proposes "Ethernet"

Robert Metcalfe, a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, writes his original memo proposing an "Ethernet," a means of connecting computers together. Metcalfe described the document, typed out on an IBM Selectric typewriter, as follows: "Ether Acquisition" ... heavy with handwritten annotations -- one of which was "ETHER!" -- and with hand-drawn diagrams -- one of which showed `boosters' interconnecting branched cable, telephone, and radio ethers in what we now call an internet.... If Ethernet was invented in any one memo, by any one person, or on any one day, this was it."